Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public The parents felt they were in good hands. Xinhua Hospital, which is affiliated with the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, was acclaimed for its pediatrics department . It was the first Chinese institution to perform open heart surgery on infants, and the first in the country to separate conjoined twins. If all went well, the hospital would make history once again. The girl would be the first person in the world to receive a gene-editing therapy directed at the brain. It would rewrite the mutated gene in her neurons, restoring the needed DNA base so she could make a vital protein. Leading the effort was Zilong Qiu, a neuroscientist at the university’s brain center, the Songjiang Research Institute. At the time, in late March 2025, Qiu was one of several researchers around the world vying to push base editors—a more precise form of the powerful gene editor CRISPR—into custom treatments for ...
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Taiwan’s drone goals play to its technology manufacturing strengths Financial Times UK 23 Jul 2026 There’s a new drone maker on the block. Hot on the heels of Ukraine, which has gone from a stand ing start five years ago to pro du cing mil lions of unmanned aer ial vehicles per year, Taiwan is stak ing its bid to become a drone-pro duc tion power house. The Taiwanese gov ern ment wants to ear mark $6.5bn for drones over the next six years. Estab lish ing itself in the field is far from blue-sky think ing. It already sup plies much of the world’s most advanced chips and boasts a vibrant private sec tor build ing pro duc tion cap ab il ity. There are plenty of buy ers: drone exports in the first quarter of this year trumped the entirety of 2025. Coun tries are hus band ing funds for mil it ary drones; national industry boos t er ism not with stand ing, some of this will end up being spent over seas. True, on cur rent run rates, Taiwan is still a min now. Par tic u larly...
US oil refineries are running at full tilt as wars in the Middle East and Ukraine choke global supplies of fuels, increasing the risk of outages at a time when prices are already rising sharply. Refineries across the US are running at 96 per cent of their capacity, with those in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains regions operating at 100 per cent, according to the US Energy Information Administration. US energy companies have stepped up exports of petroleum products, including diesel and jet fuel, to record levels following Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil supplies passed before the Middle East conflict began in February. While transits through the waterway had increased briefly following a ceasefire between the US and Iran last month, a flare-up in hostilities has again frozen the strait. Houthi rebels have also threatened a Red Sea route that Saudi Arabia is using to get most of its crude to market. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia...